Find out why Paris Hilton will lose 97% of her inheritance:




Anybody sad for Paris out there? Anyone think she should keep the money?

What if her grandpa didn't give it to charity -- would you be upset if the government took half of the money to give other people an opportunity instead of turning it over to the deadbeat Paris Hilton? Remember the government helped to make Conrad Hilton's fortune by providing roads to get to the hotels, safety inspectors and cops so that people could feel safe in the hotels, etc., etc. Whereas Paris did squat for that money. Think about it.

Watch More Young Turks Videos Here

When Paris Hilton was in jail, she spoke often about how the experience changed her and left her wanting to make the world a better place. So that's exactly what she's doing. Because the world is filled with so many intractable problems, she has chosen to target one of the most problematic -- drunken elephants. Yep. Paris is on a crusade to help stop elephants in India from getting blitzed. "The elephants get drunk all the time. It is becoming really dangerous. We need to stop making alcohol available to them," she said. Let's assume that by "elephants" she means elephants, and not Britney and Lindsay.

But how can I help, you may be saying? Well, for starters, don't leave a whiskey bottle out in an area where there are elephants roaming around without supervision. And don't go to the zoo and start lobbing cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon into the elephants' habitat. And don't bring a baby elephant into a bar and hook its trunk up to the tap.

(Photo: Capla Kesting Fine Art)

We're no fan of the celebutante. We find drunk, rich sorority-ish girls pretty boring. Still, the coverage of their downfall - Nicole Richie is following Paris Hilton to jail and now Lindsay Lohan, too, has been charged with DUI - is starting to make the arrests seem like an elaborate publicity stunt for a forthcoming remake of Caged Heat. It's also starting to seriously creep us out.

Probably yes. But it's worth thinking over.

On Friday I went to the revival of the great American musical Gypsy, starring Patti Lupone, at New York's City Center Theater. As every critic (with the mysterious exception of the New York Times' Ben Brantley) will attest, it is astonishing. When Patti Lupone strides on to stage, she's greeted like a Liberator come to unshackle audiences from the tyranny of crappy musicals. (I realize that many readers took exception to my rave for Knocked Up. But please, believe me this time.)

Gypsy is based on the true story of "Mama Rose" Hovick, the prototype of the pushy stage mother - a thrice-married bulldozer of a woman who carts her two daughters, June and Louise, all over the dying vaudeville circuit during the 1920s and 30s, in the hopes of making June a star. (In this production June is portrayed brilliantly and eerily as a Jon-Benet Ramsay type.) Significantly Rose's own mother had abandoned her as a child. This may help explain why Rose pushes and smothers June ... until June runs away, leaving the blander Louise the object of her mother's monomania. Louise, second fiddle up till, takes whatever attention she can get from her mother; that's how hungry she is for anything approaching affection.

In the musical Rose is courted by the act's kindly, if weak, manager Herbie. All he wants is to marry Rose and make her happy. But Rose is obsessed; she must make a star out of one of her daughters. Even after June runs off, Rose pushes Herbie (her only shot at domestic stability) away, and eventually the otherwise talentless Louise becomes a stripper, the real-life Gypsy Rose Lee - horrifically enough, with the mother's acquiescence!

I came across a link today. It was a photo gallery about Human Trafficking, a truly brutal reality that exists in most, if not all, western countries. Yesterday, there was a huge bust, a valiant deed done by the men in blue to get these swine off the street. Fact remains Human Trafficking is a form of slavery and is a huge problem. Probably too big of a problem for any of us to solve, let's find something to distract ourselves with shall we.

Fox News personality Michelle Malkin recently had a guest -- a porn website operator who is taking pictures of legal aged girls and posting them on the internet. Love or hate Fox News you will get a great chuckle out of this clip. It's fair to suggest she is even more angry then Keith Olbermann is with the Bush Administration.

*clip thanks to Newshounds

This isn't the first time they have covered this story. Bill O'Reilly in June talked about this guy and they concluded that he was not breaking the law and that he is just a "skeezy guy", and that mothers should hide their children from him. They covered this story for an excuse to scroll half naked ladies across the FOX NEWS screen for 5 minutes. In my opinion, this is bullsh!%. It's no different then the Lesbian Gang story -- just an excuse to scroll the word "Lesbian" across the screen. What's better then getting people mad and horny at the same time?

Mika Brzezinski reacts to the media frenzy her Paris Hilton protest has caused.

If anything good comes out of the latest Paris Hilton episode it will be the comedy. Here courtesy of David Letterman.

Larry King bumped Michael Moore to speak with Paris Hilton. Who needs to talk about health care when a spoiled rich brat just got out of jail?

"I feel like I've started my journey and I'm going to continue every day to find out more about myself."
-Paris Hilton on Larry King, June 27

June 27:
No time to waste. Tonight I found out that suspenders aren't very flattering on a young woman, even when she's topless. Thanks for making a fan's dream come true, Larry.

June 28:
Today I found out that if I wake up right at noon, my clock doesn't say a.m. or p.m. My curiosity was not satisfied. I went to the Encyclopedia, which is bunch of books with the same title, and I found out that it's because noon is a twelve that isn't in the morning or the afternoon. I mean, how could noon be after noon? Don't be ridiculous. In fact, noon is the "m," which stands for "merinian" or something. I think I will be visiting the Encyclopedia many more times in my life.

Next day...

During yesterday's record-breakingly boring interview with Larry King, Paris Hilton lamented the poor quality of jail slop. Which of the following do you think most accurately depicts Paris's lunches while incarcerated? Check out the photos below and take the poll.

Paris Hilton did us all a favor on the Larry King show last night by highlighting a problem that has completely escaped the attention of the country: Prison Claustrophobia. You see, when you are placed into a prison cell, you end up feeling very alone and very confined. Pretty soon you begin to feel that you are in a very small place. For those who are used to large landscapes, like mountains and open skies, this sense of being cramped can make you quite uneasy. You might even feel pangs of uncertainty and fear, which is the clinical definition of claustrophobia.

So, Mika Brzezinski, on MSNBC, had a histrionic, possibly staged freakout during which she refused to lead with the Paris Hilton story, called her producer out (by name) for scheduling it atop her newscast, and even tried to burn the paper with the Hilton copy. Staged or not, does she have a point?

She's not the first journalist to voice disgust and disappointment with the media's obsession with celebrity (it happened on CNN as well), but the protests ultimately seem ineffective -- the networks keep covering Paris on their newscasts and interview shows, and if it's not Paris, it's dead pregnant women in Ohio, or high school students having sex with their teachers.

In fact, on nights when the war is going especially bad, or Rudy Giuliani's South Carolina chairman, state Treasurer Thomas Ravenel, is indicted on federal cocaine charges, Fox News seems to talk only about celebrities, shocking murders, and hot-button social issues, and other networks are equally conflicted about their missions. Tabloid TV is a complicated process: it skirts real stories, which is both a failure of the system and a strategy of it. Video of Brzezinski's Network moment below.


[Ben Greenman's acclaimed new book of fiction, A Circle is a Balloon and Compass Both, is now available. Order it here.]

The Catholics have the sacrament of confession, and the evangelicals have their personal testimonies in which they uncork the shameful details of their lives before they met Christ and were reformed. There is a secular equivalent in our culture, and it mandates that "fallen" celebrities must publicly acknowledge their misdeeds, say how much they have learned through the process, dedicate themselves to saving the planet and African famine relief, obtain the required absolution from Father Oprah, and then forget about the whole ritual and go back to being the delightfully sleazy personalties that made them famous in the first place!

Dear Diary,

I am free. Early this morning, I was released from jail, walked calmly to my mother's car, and drove away. I had a small smile on my face, not because I was feeling superior, or happy, or stoned. It was a smile of knowledge. I smiled because I knew something about the jail. I knew that it was not really a jail in Los Angeles County that had held me. I was in a jail of the self. And now I am free.


And yet, I am not free. I remain in jail, eating semi-gourmet meals with a tin fork and watching basic cable on a 27" screen without surround sound. Free/not-free. This may seem like a paradox. Permit me to solve it. The old Paris is condemned to life in prison. May she die there. I have no love for her. She is a blot upon the escutcheon of humanity, a superficial stain that won''t scrub off. But she was also a media creation, a sour confection of paparazzi photographs and tabloid headlines. I take responsibility for her only up to a point, and I have just passed that point. There is also a new Paris, a woman who can walk calmly to her mother's car with a small smile of knowledge on her face. How is this possible? Well, identity is a puzzle and I have solved it. I have been doubled, which is not to say divided, by a Seine of self-awareness.

When a child misbehaves, Arisotle wrote, slap the parent. I'm beginning to wonder about the parents of Paris Hilton. Recently Rick and Kathy Hilton called in to Greta Van Susteren's TV show to report on how Paris is doing in jail. Reportedly Paris spends a lot of time looking at the walls and ceiling. I found this information very pertinent, since there is virtually nothing else to do in jail besides look at the walls and ceiling. So why are the Hiltons even appearing on Greta? My guess is because they are as juvenile as their daughter. They have obviously produced a bit of a monster, and yet I'm not sure they realize it. By their standards of parenting, they may be very proud of themselves. From their point of view, here's another Hilton who has old Conrad's entrepreneurial style! He sold hotel rooms and Paris sells, well, Paris. Who knows, the sultry young beauty may even figure out a way to make her jail experience highly profitable, just as she did with her sex tape.

I could be wrong about this: Paris might actually come out with some lessons learned. Maybe when she is released, her room can be made available to Mr and Mrs Hilton, who apparently could use some lessons of their own.

Sometimes I get obsessed with a topic, whether it's Paris Hilton crying in court (did you know her personal doctor is a plastic surgeon?) or the Bush administration authorizing torture. In this case, it's the Sopranos ending. I love it and can't get enough of it.

My theory about the ending is clearly right and has only been buttressed by more evidence since. But now there is a second legitimate theory that has captured my interest. It was sent to us by one of our listeners, Lindsay Scarey.

She agrees with me that sudden, sharp cut to black represents death. No one else has offered an even vaguely reasonable alternative. The person's perspective is suddenly lost and goes to a blank screen. This is what happens when you die.